Joe Millard - The Good the Bad and the Ugly

“You can see for yourself how well the guests are treated here.”

“I’m hunting for a man named Bill Carson,” Sentenza said. “Ever hear of him?”

“And we’re being hunted by a man named Canby. Ever hear of him?” The sergeant’s laugh was a snarl. “He’s the Yankee colonel whose Colorado Volunteers cut us to pieces today at Glorietta, friend. Now they’re fixing to hunt down the pieces and stomp them to pulp. We’re interested in only one thing here, mister, and that’s saving our worthless hides. And you come asking for one of us. Why, mister, and in whose name? Damned if I can figure what you civilians got in your heads—it sure as hell ain’t good sense.”

Sentenza forced himself to patience.

“This Carson has a black patch in place of an eye and he’s with the Third Cavalry.”

“Ain’t nobody here from the Third.” The sergeant tipped up the bottle, lowered it abruptly. “The Third, you say? Then your man’s riding to his own funeral right now. Our scouts report Canby’s whole Yankee force is on the way from Fort Union to hold Glorietta Pass. General Sibley’s throwing in every man we got to take it. The Third left Galisteo at midnight to lead the fast assault. They’ll be plumb in the middle of a battle that’ll make today’s scrap look like a picket skirmish.”

Sentenza slammed his fist to his palm in frustration.

“But suppose Carson survives. Where would he be afterwards?”

“Either retreating down that hundred and fifty miles of desert hell they call the Jornada del Muerte —the Dead Men’s March—or in Battleville, the Union prison camp. If he’s a friend of yours, you better hope he’s dead or in the desert. Either way he’d be better off than in that hell camp.”

“I’m obliged, Sergeant,” Sentenza said bleakly. “And keep the rest of the whisky. It’s all yours.”

Outside he stood for a long time in bitter thought. At last he swung into the saddle and headed back towards Glorietta Pass.

CHAPTER 8

THE Confederate Invasion of New Mexico was at an end. The private dreams of General Sibley and the high hopes of the Confederacy died together in the holocaust of the second battle for Glorietta Pass.

For long and bloody hours the struggle had see-sawed, the issue in doubt. Then a force of Colorado Volunteers, slipping over the mountains, had struck the unprotected Confederate rear. In a fury of destruction they had burned eighty-five wagonloads of irreplaceable supplies and bayoneted six hundred horses and mules.

Isolated in a barren, hostile land, hands and bellies empty, the invaders had no choice but to begin the long and terrible retreat. It was in no sense a rout. They withdrew from the bloody field in good order and marched southward, Canby’s victorious Colorado Volunteers at their heels.

In the little town of Santa Bella, near the northern rim of the dead Jornada , a hotelkeeper by the name of Pardue stood at the window with his wife and watched the grey-clad columns you. He could barely conceal his glee.

“I got it on good authority that Colonel Canby and his Colorado Volunteers are less than five miles behind them. That’s why they’re marching on the double. They brought their war to us but Canby gave them a bellyful of medicine. They’ve had all the fighting they can stomach for a long time to come.”

“Poor boys,” his wife murmured as an ambulance crowded with wounded edged past the marching columns.

“Poor boys, my rump. They came asking for it and they got it. The sooner those thieving beggars clear out the sooner the Yankees will get here. And the Yankees, in case you’ve forgotten, woman, don’t take everything we have and pay for it in promises or worthless Jeff Davis shinplasters. What Yankees need they pay for in good gold and silver.”

A canvas-topped headquarters wagon rattled into view, passing the columns of marching troops. Pardue snatched open the curtain to point.

“Look, there’s Sibley himself—up there on that wagon. The one with the white beard, that’s the great General Henry H. Sibley himself, getting out from underfoot at last.” He pretended to wave a flag, jeering, “Long live the Confederacy! Long live Jeff Davis! Yeah—yeahyeah—”

His wife grabbed his arm.

“Sam, what are they doing to those men down there ?”

Pardue bent forward to look. “Getting ready to execute them.”

A few sorry-looking soldiers, their hands tied behind their backs, were being shoved into line against an adobe wail The firing squad took its stance a dozen paces away. A sergeant with a bull voice read the list of charges, his bellow coming fitfully above the thud of marching fort and the rumble of wagons and gun carriages.

“Rape... cowardice... desertion under fire... looting of dead or wounded comrades...”

The Pardues whirled as the hotel door burst open with a crash. A man charged in, waving a pistol.

“That horse out there at your hitchrail—where’s the man who owns it?”

“Please,” Pardue said nervously, “do you mind pointing that pistol in some other direction. This war already has my wife frightened half to death.”

“Answer me, damn you. Where is he? You know the two-legged skunk I mean. Tall and white-haired—wears a cigar in his face and mighty few words get past it.”

“Get out of here,” Pardue’s wife said shrilly. “Whatever your ditty business is, my husband will have no part in it.”

“Shut up, old hag.” The intruder put his gun on Pardue. “You. Talk.”

Pardue lifted an unsteady hand.

“Upstairs. Room at the head of the stairs. But don’t tell him I—”

His voice was drowned in a man’s scream of mortal terror from the street outside. The yell was cut off by the crash of shots. The voice of the sergeant barked commands. By than the intruder was halfway up the stairs, running on tiptoe.

The Man With No Name turned from the window, his face impassive, his feelings untouched by the executions he had witnessed. Death in its most violent forms had been a part of his life too long to affect him. He went back to a table where his pistol lay beside a kit of cleaning tools.

He sat down, swung open the cylinder and shook the cartridges out to the table top. He reached for the cleaning rod and froze. From the hall just outside his closed door came the faintest tinkle of a spur.

He was on his feet like a cat, facing the door, his gun in his right hand, his left reaching for the spilled cartridges

From behind him the voice of Tuco, bubbling with glee, said, “There are two kinds of spurs in the world, Whitey—those that jingle ouside a door and those that slip silently through a window.”

The bounty hunter whirled. Tuco sat on the sill of the window, one foot in the room, the other still on the narrow balcony outside. His cocked pistol pointed unwaveringly at the tall man’s chest. His ugly face was a mask of Satanic triumph.

“Drop the gun. You will have no need for it where you are going, friend.”

“It’s empty,” the other said.

He dropped pistol and cartridges on to the table, his eyes measuring the distance to the window.

Tuco chuckled wickedly.

“Uh-uh, Whitey. You’d never make it.”

He carefully swung his other leg over the sill and set his feet firmly. A heavy, ominous rumbling began somewhere in the distance. Its reverberations set the window to rattling. Tuco cocked his head, listening.

“Ah-ah, I remember, long ago, the priest telling us that the sky thundered when Judas hanged himself.”

“That sounds more like cannon fire than thunder to me.”

Tuco shrugged.

“Cannon fire? Thunder? It is all the same as long as a Judas hangs.”

He slipped a coil of rope from his shoulder, a hangman’s noose already fashioned at one end.